Nominees selected for police accountability board

City officials have announced seven new nominees for a civilian oversight panel that reviews police misconduct investigations. The board has been the focus of controversy after issuing a scathing report Chief Gil Kerlikowske last year.

City Councilman Tim Burgess, who chairs the public safety committee, announced the nominations Wednesday for the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, tasked with reviewing samples of officer disciplinary cases and monitoring trends in complaints and investigations, as well as how the department compares to best practices nationwide.

The nominations are pending approval from the full city public safety committee and the City Council, which could be as soon as August 11, according to a statement from Burgess.

Nominees include:

Patrick Sainsbury, a retired prosecutor who headed the King County Prosecutor’s Office fraud division for 26 years;

Tina Bueche, a small business owner in Pioneer Square;

George Davenport, a former Navy lawyer and prosecutor and chief operating officer at First African Methodist Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill;

Martha Nordberg, a forensic accountant and former Internal Revenue Service special agent; and

David Wilma, a former Drug Enforcement Administration special agent and freelance writer.

“These individuals have the disposition, skills, and competence to serve every citizen and every neighborhood. The Board is in good hands. Police accountability and oversight is strengthened by these highly qualified individuals,” Burgess said in a news release.

New members will step into a role that has been highly controversial. Outgoing board members say they were often stymied by lack of departmental support and severely restricted access to disciplinary records. Department officials and police guild leaders, however, often criticized the board for overstepping its authority and accused members of politicizing what should be an impartial role.

In 2007, the OPA Review Board issued a report accusing police Chief Gil Kerlikowske of interfering with an internal investigation in which two officers were accused of using excessive force and planting evidence on a drug dealer downtown. While the chief was later cleared by the department’s civilian director of internal affairs, the report generated an outcry that prompted Mayor Greg Nickels to appoint a panel that recommended 29 reforms to the police disciplinary process. All those reforms, including expansion of the OPA Review Board from three to seven members, were adopted this year.

But the board’s effectiveness still could be hampered by a recent decision cutting off access to full disciplinary files.

The police guild’s labor contract with the city required officers’ names to be redacted from disciplinary files handed to the Review Board. But outgoing members say some case files were so heavily edited, they were unintelligible. The city initially granted access to uncensored records, which prompted a grievance from the police guild. A labor examiner ruled in favor of the guild, but the decision is pending appeal with the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission.